Traditional institutions like marriage and family are under attack like never before. The home, the nuclear family, the church, faith in God, even God Himself, are the target of a systemic and focused campaign to undermine their value and rightful revered place in society. It breaks my heart, because I am intimately aware of the value these have meant in my life and literally thousands of others over the course of my lifetime. It’s more than just an emotional value. It is a practical… real… solidify-your-world value that creates emotionally and mentally healthy individuals who are then able to positively impact society. That, my friends, is the most desperate need in our families, communities, nation, and world today. There is a solution that then serves as a catalyst for a whole host of “right answers” to what needs to be done. But we must get that answer right first for the other answers to make sense and fit together. Jesus was asked what the most important thing was.

‘Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” ‘ Mark 12:29-31 https://www.bible.com/bible/59/MRK.12.29-31

Whenever a person enters into a relationship with God through His Son, Jesus, they become a child of God, adopted into God’s family in a marvelous and miraculous way. A transaction takes place where Jesus’ death on the cross is substituted for the just and right punishment for our sins and God accounts the righteousness of Jesus to the repentant, new believer. We become a new creation.

‘Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. ‘ 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 https://www.bible.com/bible/59/2CO.5.17-21

God has His eye upon us for good and not for evil. He desires that every single one of us would turn to Him in faith and begin the journey into the rich and abundant life He has for us. But He also allows us to make choices. Each choice we make has consequences. Each choice results in a new set of options with a new set of consequences.

I was raised when maps were all we had to help us get around. I loved reading maps. Finding and following the shortest route was my goal and I enjoyed a real sense of accomplishment when we successfully completed a trip. One thing I learned though was that wrong turns sometimes occur. Once you realized you had taken a wrong turn you needed to take immediate action to get back to the desired path. Continuing down the road thinking it will eventually get you to your destination was a losing proposition. I learned the U-turn from observing my father. As an adult I have pulled a few U-turns myself. A good church word is “repent” which in essence means “do a U-turn”. It carries the connotation of recognizing you are on the wrong road, headed in the wrong direction, and you take decisive action to go the other way into the right direction… into the arms of Jesus. God’s desire for every person is that they enter into a relationship with Him through His Son, Jesus.

This is the beginning of the most incredible journey, a journey which consists of the rest of this earthly life, continuing on into an eternal life in heaven.

There is another similarity between our road trips and this journey that Jesus calls us to. The further we have travel down wrong roads, the more backtracking we will have to do. There are habits that develop heading down wrong roads that are not helpful to our new life. There are addictions to be broken, lifestyle choices to be turned away from, and relationships that will have to be altered. We are adopted and become God’s children the moment that holy transaction takes place. But God’s desire is that we grow into the whole, healthy, faithful, mature men and women He created us to be. That transformation takes our active participation and it lasts a lifetime. He works in us to make us holy.

‘Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. ‘ NIV Romans 12:1-2 https://www.bible.com/bible/111/ROM.12.1-2

Our nation is badly divided right now. It is extremely sad that a rational, thoughtful conversation between people of differing opinions is so hard to achieve. While I have a political opinion on the many issues of the day, I am dismayed because I know that anything our governing authorities may do will only treat the outward symptoms. And they often carry unintended negative consequences. Only when I turn to Jesus do I see hope. And it is a marvelous hope. When God’s people get busy doing what we are called to do – pray, seek God’s face, love God, love others, intercede, serve, and obey Him, then we will see the deep work in lives that will result in the transformation of our marriages. As our marriages are strengthened our families will grow healthier. Healthy families undergird strong, growing communities – the Church family and local communities. And healthy communities in turn positively impact our state, nation, and world.

God’s plan is the positive transformation of society through the transformation of the individual through a vibrant, growing relationship with Him. In my last three posts I spoke of the Kingdom of God being real and current, yet only partially revealed. God’s kingdom is the picture of what society can be like – people seek to love Him and love others, brokenness is healed, loss is genuinely comforted, the confused and lost are found and given direction, and through it all God is lifted up and glorified.

It is a young teenager who gives up her addictions when she finds out she is pregnant. Or better yet, she decides to wait to experience sexual intimacy until she marries her husband.

It is a troubled youth that has a father at home to see and head off the down-ward emotional spiral. Or better yet the father was there from the moment of his birth to invest into his young son and to head off issues very early.

It is a doctor, alert to the needs of every patient, noticing a young man that is slipping deeper into a violent mindset who determines to intervene not just with more drugs but compassion and wisdom and a different course of action. Or better yet, the doctor is sensitive and compassionate enough that he prays and intercedes for the troubled young man and gets Holy Spirit given direction in bring healing.

It is a local community that is close enough and communicates well enough that a troubled and violent youth is identified early enough that they prevent a mass tragedy. Or better yet, the community is one where faith and love predominate and a sad and troubled youth is loved, embraced, and gets the deep help he needs early.

One of the more difficult things to measure is a problem avoided. Since it didn’t occur you don’t have something to count. Yet it is true that if you do the right things, you will get the right results. This is true in industrial plant maintenance. It’s true about taking care of your car. It is true in our families. It is true in society. Doing the right thing in our society would be to recognize and support the Judeo-Christian principles that this nation was founded upon. Latitude was given for persons of other belief systems, but this nation was founded as a nation under God specifically because He gave us the privilege to do something new in the world. We must not abandon the foundation that made this nation the great nation that is has become. Faith in God, responsibility to God, family, and community, genuine love for others, clear and compelling laws and a judiciary that rightly interpret the laws, are all cornerstones of the just, fair, and compassionate society our forefathers attempted to establish and that we are responsible to preserve.

Lord Jesus, please move in this land to bring this nation back to it’s founding principles. Jesus bring an awakening to this nation and cause us to turn back to you. Stir your body, the Church, to pray, to intercede with fervor, and to minister in the power of your Holy Spirit. Help us to wage warfare in the spiritual realms and minster in your mighty power in our homes, schools, workplaces, churches, and the hi-ways and bi-ways. Bring your answer to today’s issues Lord with clarity and emphasis. Lord God display your power and love in and through your people. Be glorified today Lord. Make your presence known Holy Lord and be glorified today. It’s in the name of your glorious Son and our mighty savior, Jesus Christ, we pray.

““The most important one,” answered Jesus,“ is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’” Mark 12:29-30

Jesus was very clear here.He was repeating the words from Deuteronomy.I’ve read this dozens of times, but today the word ALL stuck out.It was like they are being highlighted for emphasis.Before I get to the weighty matter of what all means, let’s look at the four elements Jesus articulates.

Heart.When I think of heart I think of passion.I think of the thing or things that drive me, that compel me.“The team with the most heart often wins.” It is more than emotion, but emotion is part of it.Another analogy is if all our actions were a compass needle, our heart would be the point to which the compass needle consistently points.

Soul.I struggle with distinguishing this from the other three, but I realize it is place where my will resides.My soul is the center of my individuality and consciousness.

Mind.This is pretty easy, it is my cognitive, thinking self.It is the part of me that processes data, assesses information, and makes decisions.It is our intellect and the repository of all the data we have accumulated throughout our life.

Strength.My strength is the resulting development of all my actions to date.Much like a laborer muscled and toned from years of hard work, my strength is the capabilities I have now because of the life and actions I have taken.

So back to all.Does Jesus really mean ALL?And we are to LOVE with ALL.If we love God with all then there won’t be anything left over for others – a spouse, children, parents or siblings, will there?Well Jesus does say ALL and the heart, soul, mind, and strength pretty much encompasses everything about who we are.How can this be?

It gets back to the reality that God is our creator.He knows us better than we know ourselves.He created us on purpose, for a purpose.It is His desire for each person to fully fill their divinely ordained purpose.But our purpose can only be found when we are immersed in Him and when we are filled by Him – through the in-dwelling Holy Spirit.

By giving Him ALL of us, He is able to mold, shape, and transform us into exactly the person we are meant to be.In some cases it is a transformation of sin habits.At salvation the penalty for our sin is paid.Jesus paid it on the cross and we said yes to receive it at our salvation.We are washed clean by the blood of Jesus.But the flesh still remembers the old habits.Sanctification is the process of losing the old, bad habits and taking on new, good habits.

A life verse for me is Psalm 37:4. “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”This verse makes perfect sense when it is aligned with Jesus admonition.When God has our heart, soul, mind and strength, we cannot help but become aligned with His heart.When our heart aligns with His heart it will desire what He desires.When we desire what God desires, we become partners with Him is seeing these things come to be.In some cases we will be moved to missions, moved to serve sacrificially, moved to go and do the things we have been prepared to do with the totality of our life experiences and under God’s anointing. In all cases we will be moved to love more deeply and fully than we are able to without Him.

Another aspect of this is we will be moved to pray God’s prayers.Intercession is a high and holy calling.I’m not talking about reading through a list of names and asking God to bless family and friends.Intercession which emanates from God’s heart to our heart is a burden to pray for specific people and needs even to the point of travail. God wants to partner with us, to pray through us.

There is one final element of Jesus’ saying that needs emphasizing. The admonition begins with LOVE. Love is a game changer. We can serve. We can honor. We can follow. But none of these meet the standard of loving God. They each are manifestations of our love response, but love is deeper and richer than these alone. Love is the deep-seated acknowledgment that God is the wholly complete other to Whom our devotion, desire, and passion is aimed. 1 John 4:16 says this. “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.”

To love God with All that we are is to enter fully into the life we were created for. Amazingly we find that our ability to love and do the things God calls us to do become the desires of our heart. He takes our attempts to love, pray, serve, work and, through His Spirit, accomplishes His good and perfect plan in us and in those He leads us to. As we walk the road of loving God with our All we will find that He reveals our All to be more than we knew or imagined. But it is only in losing ourselves in Him that He is able to do this great and wonderful work in us.

Purpose today to love God with your all and bask in the joy of knowing He first loves us and He will live fully in us as we abandon ourselves into His love.

Our devotional this morning used John 15:5 and I saw a portion of that verse in a whole new way. Jesus is speaking. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” I guess I have tended to zip over the last part of that verse, the part that says “apart from me you can do nothing.” Today it struck me that from Jesus’ eternal perspective, the things we do for ourselves, the things that create a lot of busyness in our day but are not done from our connection with Him don’t really amount to much. Actually I guess more accurately they amount to nothing. That’s a sobering thought.

So how does that square with having a job to support our family, raising our children to be good citizens, or just being a good neighbor to those around us? Using the rest of this scripture for context, it comes down to our connection with Jesus and our on-going growth in that relationship. Our purpose is to become more like Jesus. That is accomplished in and through every aspect of our life. Our relationship with Jesus is what prepares and then propels us forward into those things that He has purposed for us to walk in.

Two quick stories from the past two weeks illustrate this. A little over a week ago I was involved in an auto accident. Actually I was waiting at a cross-roads and the accident was in front of me and one of the vehicles then rammed me. I was not injured but my little car is badly damaged. In the moments preceding the accident I had plenty of time to cross in front of the vehicles, but I uncharacteristically waited. Because I waited, I became involved. I don’t feel like I did much in the ensuing care-giving, but others seemed to take comfort in my support and prayer. And I had a tremendous peace both at the time of the accident and in the days that followed that I was where I was supposed to be and I did what I was supposed to do. Nothing fancy, but the Father’s peace was tangible. I am still in contact with some of those involved and I believe the Lord will use this event for good in each one of the lives involved.

Second story – earlier this summer friends of mine in the Care Ministry at church mentioned that a choir of orphans from Haiti were in the US touring to raise awareness and funds for the orphanages they represent. The family that has been instrumental in making this happen – Linda and David, also go to our church. These stories raised an awareness that became a Holy Spirit nudge to “do something”. Yesterday they came for a day of swimming and fun at our house.

In my prayer leading up to this I wanted to have a message of ringing clarity for them or some spiritual insight from the Lord to share. But what I got was a strong sense of just loving on them and sharing from what the Lord has blessed us with. In my younger years… maybe even just a few years ago, I would have been dissatisfied that the day wasn’t more spiritual.

Talking with the host family at the end of the evening though, I heard how the Lord had provided so many manifestations of His grace throughout the process of getting the children here. And then they explained how they so badly needed the break that our day provided. They have literally been performing 2 and 3 times a day all summer. They cleared their calendar to just relax and join us. That statement just confirmed to me that we did what we were supposed to do.

Friends, I encourage you to spend quality time with the Lord. Allow His love to color your perspective on all things. Become one who consistently listens to the Lord whispering to your heart. Learn to recognize when the Lord is speaking to your heart and obey your heart over what your mind tells you in those cases. As we do so, we are vines that become more and more fruitful. And that fruit is the sweetest of fruit because it is fruit of eternal significance.

Blessings to you in abundance. And let the Father bless others through you today.

By the way, the ministry that our friends run to support the Orphans in Haiti is called “Love Him, Love Them”. You can find it at the website of that name.